Melissa earned her doctorate degree in organizational communication from the Department of Communication at UCSB. She currently works as an Academic Coordinator for two interdisciplinary research centers on campus: The Center for Information Technology & Society and The Orfalea Center for Global & International Studies. Melissa uses her research skills and experience working with researchers from disparate fields to facilitate intraorganizational collaboration within the UCSB community.  She is also an experienced facilitator utilizing Liberating Structures in her work to enable collborative groups to more effectively self-organize. Along with her colleague Joanne Nowak, she started the Sustainable Technology Repair Initiative in 2019 in order to fill a student resource gap at UCSB, the provision of affordable, sustainable digital device repair and device maintenance education. 

Previous to her study and work at UCSB, Melissa worked as the Coordinator of the Johnson & Johnson Employee Volunteer Support Program where she worked with local and national non-profit organizations to match J&J employees with meaningful volunteer work and to organize large-scale volunteer events with the local community. Melissa earned her Masters in Communication and Information Studies from Rutgers University and her Bachelor of Arts from Northeastern Univerity.